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47.07.01A(603w)
TO ROBERT P. PATTERSONJuly 1, 1947
Secret[Washington, DC]
Dear Judge: I have been thinking over your letter of June 20 regarding the status of Army personnel in the Embassy Executive Office in Nanking. While in China, I found a number of United States governmental agencies operating, or planning to operate, as representatives of our Government, on instructions issued from Washington. It appeared to me that unless there was some local coordination in connection with their contacts with Chinese officialdom, confusion would result and there would be a less effective performance and in some cases possibly direct contradictions. At that time there were actually in China, or due soon to arrive, individual groups regarding agriculture, forestry, engineering, sanitation, and cultural matters, in addition to the Army and Navy affairs.
In order to draw these many agencies into the picture, so that their operations could be properly coordinated, I recommended, and you and Forrestal concurred in, the establishment of the Embassy Executive Office. This office was to assist the Ambassador in exercising intelligently an overall supervision of American governmental activities in China.
The establishment of such an office would have been a simple matter had the Embassy possessed personnel familiar with this business of coordination, which is second nature to our staff officers. This deficiency, coupled with the fact that I had at my disposal at the time a small office, two officers and four clerks who were in effect performing this coordinating function for all matters in China, moved me to propose the transfer of this office to the Embassy with its records, to set up the technique until such time as the State Department could itself take over the work. As I was bringing one of the two officers home with me in charge of the records of my mission in China I proposed that Timberman be moved down from Peiping to take this officer’s place, Timberman speaking Chinese and being intimately familiar with things Chinese. Then apparently the trouble, confusion and misunderstanding started. Had Timberman been a civilian I assume that matters would have gone on all right, but as it was there developed a question of balance, rank and activities between the Army and Navy.1
The office I was proposing was to be related to all United States Government activities in China and only incidentally to Army and Navy activities. It was not to be a policy-making group. As matters now stand so many misunderstandings have developed that it appears as though the effort I made there to achieve some form of coordination has been without effect, even though the President’s executive order made the purpose clear, I thought.
In view of the foregoing I would appreciate your re-examining the matter from the viewpoint of making the Executive Office a permanent fixture, jointly and mutually supported. I hope that if you find its continuation desirable, the relative minor monetary and personnel considerations can be overcome by each Department for its own personnel.Faithfully yours,
NA/RG 59 (Central Decimal File, 124.93/6–2047)
1. Brigadier General Thomas S. Timberman had been a Chinese language student in the mid-1930s. Between February 1944 and March 1946, he had served at Southeast Asia Command headquarters. He commanded the US contingent at Marshall’s Executive Headquarters in Peking between March 1946 and January 1947, when he moved to Nanking to become chief of the Army Section at the Embassy Liaison Office and subsequently (on April 11) the Embassy Executive Office. Regarding the negotiations over the Executive Office, see US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, 8 vols. (Washington: GPO, 1971–73), 7: 1428–38.
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